Whose Justice? A Comparative Approach to Canadian Civil Lay Justice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lay judges are people without legal training or experience who are empowered to resolve disputes on a part-time basis. While the Canadian justice system relies on them in some criminal and administrative matters, it excludes them from civil disputes, in contrast to numerous jurisdictions around the world. This contrast suggests that Canada may also want to expand the role of lay judges to cover some civil matters. Building on this idea, the dissertation explores how we should tailor civil lay courts to enhance their success, if we were to implement them in Canada. It starts by defining what ‘success’ means for lay courts, identifying the objectives they pursue and the key issues they face. On the one hand, lay courts have the potential to improve the quality of the judicial process—including by making it more understandable, welcoming, and efficient—and to contribute to the vitality of democracy by improving civic education and social integration. On the other hand, they also generate serious concerns in terms of judicial competence and legitimacy. To determine how lay courts may be tailored to realize their potential while addressing these concerns, the dissertation adopts a comparative case study method. It explores how the features of three lay courts located in different jurisdictions and involved in civil matters—namely the lay magistracy of England and Wales, the justices of the peace of Colombia, and the East German social courts—respond to these key issues. A key conclusion is that lay courts, in modern societies, must become hybrids between lay and professional justice if they are to provide competent and legitimate dispute resolution services. The final part of the dissertation returns to the Canadian context. It begins by identifying the limits imposed on lay courts by the country’s constitution. Within these limits, and drawing inspiration from the lessons learned in the case studies, it then suggests a preliminary sketch of the features of civil lay courts adapted to the Canadian context. It concludes that while lay courts could benefit the Canadian justice system, they must be tailored carefully in order to remain competent and legitimate.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.049 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.016 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".